We document a significant relationship between subprime auto credit and road safety, with a one-standard-deviation increase in originations of such loans in a county being associated with a 5 percent increase in fatal crashes. The results are robust at various geographical levels and hold for...

Institutions often offer a menu of contracts to consumers in an attempt to create a separating equilibrium that reveals borrower types and provides better pricing. We test the effectiveness of a specific set of contracts in the mortgage market: mortgage points. Points allow borrowers to exchange...

We use a novel approach to calculate individual “financial literacy score” for a large set of California mortgage borrowers and then investigate the relation between financial literacy and mortgage outcomes. We find borrowers with low financial literacy are more likely to accept riskier...